12/10/2013 17:03SRI LANKAby Melani Manel PereraFor
months, Sunesh has been receiving phone calls from a stranger telling
him to quit his job or have his head "hanging on the street." His
complaints to the police prove useless. Although police know the
identity of the caller, they also told the activist to find him himself.
His wife, who was shadowed by a stranger, was forced to seek refuge
with her brother. "I will not stop my activities," the activist said,
"but I am looking for protection. I am afraid for myself and my family."
Colombo (AsiaNews)
- "If you want to see your children again, quit your job. Otherwise, your head
will be hanging on the street. This is not a warning," said a caller who
has been making death threats against Anthirai Jude Basil Sosai, a Tamil human
rights activist also known as Sunesh.
For months, the unknown
caller has been telling him "to stop making trouble" if he wanted to live. "I
want to continue my work," he told
AsiaNews,
"but I do not feel safe in Sri Lanka. I need protection."
Sunesh, 33, is
married with two children. "My family and I are Tamil," he explained, "a
minority that is often discriminated and marginalised in Sri Lanka."
"I work with the
Mannar District Fisheries Solidarity, a project of the National Fisheries
Solidarity Movement (NAFSO). "I work with Internally displaced people (IDPs), with
the families of missing persons and small-scale fishermen."
Since 2010, when
he began working for NAFSO, he has become one of the most active members in organising
peaceful demonstrations, campaigns and hunger strikes. However, he noted,
"as a result of my activism, I have been targeted by the Criminal
Investigation Department (CID), the army and police."
According to Sunesh,
protests he organised could be the reason for the threats. The first came on 6 June.
A stranger told him to come out of his house, and threatened him. He resisted,
and two days later he went to the police to report the incident.
With the
stranger's phone number, police identified the caller, but then told the
activist: "You now have his name and national identification number, you
can go and find him yourself."
Several months
later, on the night of 21 November, the human rights activist received another
call on his mobile from the same number. "I was in Negombo," he said, "where
we had organised the World Fisheries Days. I answered the phone and the
stranger spoke to me in broken Tamil. He told me to come out, that he was
outside of my house."
When Sunesh
showed no interest in accommodating him, the man began to speak in fluent
Sinhala, the language spoken by Sri Lanka's majority.
"He kept
pestering me and I told him that if he continued to threaten me, I would make
public our conversation," Sunesh said. "His replay was: 'You can talk to
whoever you want. We should have kidnapped you before, but did not do it. That was
a mistake.'"
After the second
call, Sunesh returned to the police to report the matter. Two policemen came to
his house and questioned his wife. She told them that someone had followed her
and that she was afraid, but nobody did anything.
"For
security reasons, I told her to stay momentarily with her brother together with
the children," he said. "I am still in Negombo. The other NAFSO members, along
with other NGOs, organised a silent march in my honour. But my family and I now
live in constant fear."
